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Donald Trump’s Incredible Shrinking Majority · Political Junkie Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: And here's my contribution to the country.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_02: I ran for president and I had to get out.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_02: I endorsed Jeb Bush and he had to get out.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: I'm the Dr. Kevorkian
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: of the Republican primary.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: I endorse Donald Trump and hope the grand magic still exists.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for having me.
• 0:46
  Mama, take this badge off me.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_03: I can't use it anymore.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: We began this episode with a February 2016 clip
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: of South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham speaking to
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: the Washington Press Club Foundation.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: In a darkly funny speech,
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Graham warned journalists about what a danger Donald Trump posed to the GOP and
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: the United States.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is the Donald Trump's Incredible Shrinking Majority edition of
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: the Political Junkie Substack.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Claire Potter.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Neil Young.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: And Neil, we're like right in the middle of the summer.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: How is it going?
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's flown by.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's going great.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: I can't believe that August is almost here.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Not ready for it.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: I wish we could slow it down, but it's been a really nice summer for me.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: How about you, Claire?
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, God.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, other than rebuilding my mother's house, things are going great.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: But I heard you've been seen in the archives, Neil.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've been spotted.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I just had a really nice day in the archives today, which is always just fun.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I found a really cool document with,
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: you know, it's just like, that's why we do this work, right?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like, it's, like,
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: so fun to,
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: like, find the document that says the things that, like, bring a story to life.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a, you know, a document that was 130 years old.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: Now it had been mimeographed, so less exciting, but...
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's always a good day when you're in the archives and you find the things you want to find.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: I love touching old things and smelling old things and so on, but I totally get it.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And every once in a while you pull a document out of a folder and you say, oh, now I understand.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now I get it.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: That was the little piece of the puzzle.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Neil,
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: today we're going to be solving political puzzles,
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: including what happened to Mitch McConnell?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Where is he?
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of shape is he in?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: We know where Lindsey Graham is.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's going to be our news focus today,
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: listeners,
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: is talking about what effect the absence of these two senior senators is going
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: to have on the Republican majority,
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: on anything Donald Trump wants to accomplish before he goes full lame duck
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: in January.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And also think a little bit about the role these two men played in the last decade
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: or so of American life.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: But first, we're going to go to the news.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps responding to President Donald Trump's claim
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: that 250,000 non-citizens were registered to vote in New Jersey,
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: California, Nevada,
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: and Pennsylvania,
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Governor Mikey Sherrill has published,
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: and that's the governor of New Jersey,
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: has published the fact that the state has removed 66,000 non-citizens from
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: the voting rolls.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Neil, how did those non-citizens get on the voting rolls and have they been voting?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, according to the New Wall Street Journal,
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: they reported that those,
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: what was it,
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: 6,000 names had been added under the previous governor,
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Governor Phil Murphy,
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: and that these were,
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: it was sort of a mistake when folks had registered for their driver's license
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: and ID cards back in the 2023-2024 period, that their names had...
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Accidentally been added to the voter rolls as well.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: So it was like a computer error, actually, is what they're saying.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: Fewer than 400 of those 6,600 people voted.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't know.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think that that's not great.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: Certainly, conservative media is making hay with this.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it's not great, too.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: But let me sort of throw in two ideas.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: One is we actually have motor voter in the state of Massachusetts.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're added to the voting rolls,
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: when you get your driver's license, you're added as an independent.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if you wish to change your registration to Democratic or Republican later, you can do that.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not as if they were being added as Democratic voters.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think the other thing we want to look at is that these 400 people who voted,
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: voted all over the state.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: So there would be maybe between one and a dozen people voting in any given election.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: There are probably, what, two or three elections a year and so on.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: But what I actually liked about this is that given the big conspiracy theories
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: about illegal voting and given the inflated numbers that the president
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: and his allies are putting out there,
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: I actually thought a governor saying, OK, we're going to go take a look at this.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, this is what we found, and this is how we cured it.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, at least, that says that states have good systems for doing these audits themselves.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: They don't need the federal government to step in and do it for them.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: You're right.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's exactly right.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think that, you know, Conservative media is going crazy on this.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: You go on Twitter, it's like the only thing folks are talking about.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: That can obviously distort sort of the impression of it, which is the whole point of it.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think also you look at the numbers,
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: you see like, oh, 400 people out of 6,600 folks ended up voting.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's, you know, 8% or so.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: But of course, that's not the right calculation, right?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's like what you just said.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's 400 in an enormous state spread out.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like this is part of the like...
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a really good point.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: The governor came forward and let it be known and said that this is a point
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: that we'll investigate.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not a cover up.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a conspiracy.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually being made transparent.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, I think all of that's right.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: But of course, the way it's going to be played politically is a little bit differently.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: But I guess that's just in keeping with the way this whole issue is being played politically.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that's right.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I think voter fraud ranks about,
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: 112th on the list of things that the average voter is really concerned about
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: as opposed to the average denizen of Twitter or the average denizen of
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: the Oval Office.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I do think this is the essence of good government.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you are practicing good government,
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: you do routine audits to make sure that everybody in the role is alive,
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: still living in the state.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is something you can do very,
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: very easily, not even with AI, but just with the data you've got at hand.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Run everybody as a taxpayer.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And see where they are.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I actually think that's really important.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: What I don't know is whether New Jersey automatically sends mail in ballots
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: to people,
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: because it's hard for me to believe that somebody who is not a citizen Woke up
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: on voting day and said, Oh, I think I'll go vote.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: That will be a fun way to celebrate my life in the United States and,
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: you know, get on the radar of the FBI.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: That was a question for me as well,
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: because it just,
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: who is the non-citizen who wants to go and vote and like some like local town,
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: you know, council election or something like that.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it'd be great to know even more sort of information about what they find.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: This is not even a drop in the bucket,
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: which again doesn't mean it shouldn't be investigated and fully figured out.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: But in terms of like,
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: the sort of conspiratorial claims that folks want to make of this sort of stuff,
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: obviously it doesn't add up.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and it also made me think, Neil,
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: that all the conspiracizing on this issue Has really made it impossible to have
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: a conversation about really modernizing our voting systems.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: What should voting look like?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: How should people be able to vote?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: How do we verify people's identities?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so on.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of this, of course, is done by hand now.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: That people who get mail-in ballots or absentee ballots actually match the signature
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: on the ballot to the signature of the registration card.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that is done by hand.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And in this day and age, that's really cumbersome and inaccurate.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And we need to change that.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, Neil.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: So on Wednesday morning,
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Trump celebrated a MAGA sweep in the Arizona Republican Party primary,
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: as if the November results were now predetermined.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: He sent out a great tweet.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And these tweets are now, well, actually, they're truth socials.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess they're called truths.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: But then they're reprinted on X.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: And his message was, the Democrats are dumbfounded.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: So who are these people, Neal?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so it's folks like this guy, Andy Biggs.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: He's an election-denying congressman out of Arizona 22.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: He's going to go up against the incumbent Democratic governor,
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: Katie Hobbs, in that election race.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Another one is a man named Alexander Culloden.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: He is someone who's been sanctioned by the Arizona State Bar for his role
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: in lawsuits that were filed by MAGA activists back in 2020.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: He's going to be challenging the Democratic incumbent,
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: Adrian Fontes, and that's in the position for Secretary of State.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: What are some other ones?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's this NFL kicker named Jay Feely who Trump has endorsed.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: He won his primary in Arizona's first.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: He's going to be facing an emergency room doctor named Amish Shah.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: There are an awful lot of medical professionals running in 2026,
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: which I want to sort of roll back to and see what you think about that.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: But he wasn't the pick of the National Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, but Shah won.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: And this seat is projected to be a potential pickup for Democrats.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Feely says, you know, he's for country and God and I don't know, whatever.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Amish Shah is a health professional.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: So...
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you think there's so many doctors in the first place?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And second of all, Arizona has this history
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: nominating extremists, Republican Party.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it goes way back to Goldwater, for crying out loud.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: But they're not doing so well.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Carrie Lake has been beaten twice.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: So what do you think is happening in Arizona?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is going to be a lot of fun for us, Neil.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is gonna be a lot of fun in Arizona.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Arizona is a state I wish I sort of knew more about.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: And actually,
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: it's like,
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: as you point out with like the history of Goldwater,
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: and there's a important political history there on the right,
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: for sort of the modern conservatism that it's helped create in the last,
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: you know, 50 to 75 years.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, your question about doctors.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder if this is a post-COVID politicization of medical folks who sort
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: of saw what was happening and wanted to become involved.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: I also wonder if it's just like healthcare has gotten so bad that it feels like
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: a good different option to do is to go into politics.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think that might be part of it.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I do think that it's also one of those professions that...
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot more made of it if you're running for office and you're a doctor, right?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the way that if you're a veteran, that's not buried at the bottom of your bio.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's like one of those leading descriptions of you, if you're a doctor or if you're a veteran.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: Lawyers, you don't tend to like...
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a little bit of a feeling like it's overrepresented just because
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: the few that we hear about,
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: it's always what we hear about when it's their biography.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: But back to Arizona and sort of the politics of it all.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: This seems like a state where,
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't say a centrist Republican,
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: but a conservative Republican could probably do pretty well.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: And yet, who are the Republicans that win the primaries in a place like Arizona?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's the lunatics.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think the conditions of the Republican Party in that state,
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: as they are in a lot of places, really favor the fringe candidates.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: But those fringe candidates then can't win in a state where
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: the average Republican probably could.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's very interesting.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: And looking at Arizona One,
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: where Feely and Shaw will face off,
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: That is a district that includes a chunk of Scottsdale, which is very liberal.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: It includes a chunk of Phoenix, which is very liberal.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: I also just think it's interesting that Democratic voters did not go for the moderate.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you would think that Democrats in Arizona would be kind of centrist,
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: kind of moderate, but Shaw is a progressive.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I wonder if we're seeing something,
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: even in places like Arizona,
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: sort of light purpley states,
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: that Democratic voters really do want to be more aggressive.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: And they really do want people who have a plan to do something to push back.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: I just wanted to toss one other thing in, too, which is RFK Jr. And I think...
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Arizona is a state where a lot of elderly people move.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of elderly people are really afraid of RFK Jr.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's deep concern about what is going to happen to Medicare
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: and what is going to happen to Social Security because certainly
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: the Trump people have been shaking their budget fist at it.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but also things like,
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: like there was something in the paper this morning about peptides
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: and I don't even really understand what peptides are,
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: but apparently GLP-1s are peptides or all kinds of things that are peptides
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: and they're when used well and when they're,
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: when you're using the right peptide for the right thing,
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: they can actually help you heal and recover.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: But apparently it's a very big thing on the right
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: to just like wildly inject yourself with peptides and RFK Jr.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: is like, yeah, why not?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, why shouldn't people put anything in their bodies that they want to?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Except for vaccines.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's right, vaccines.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know,
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: it's not striking from,
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: somebody who had a long history as a heroin addict to put anything
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: in his body he could get his mitts on.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: But that's really not a health plan.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I do wonder if older people,
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: retired people,
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: and so on are really worried about the collapse of the health infrastructure.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: They should be.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: OK, now we got one more person in Arizona that I just want to drop a penny on,
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: which is Democratic incumbent Greg Stanton in Arizona for beat
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: the Democratic Socialists.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: So Arizona may be moving left a little bit, but not so much left.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Democratic Socialism is not on for for Arizona.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so we also have a primary coming up in Michigan on August 4th,
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: and there's a real brawl in the Democratic Party for the Senate seat being vacated
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: by Gary Peters.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us a little bit about that, Neal.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's this race between a progressive physician,
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: another doctor,
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: public health official Abdul El-Sayed,
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: and the sitting congresswoman from Michigan's Eleven,
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Haley Stevens,
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: who's getting just tons of press because of her,
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: shall we say, sort of unconventional presentation style.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, is that the right way to put it?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: How would you describe Haley Stevens, Claire?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: She screeches like a lot.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: She she becomes really sort of fired up and seems to sort of temporarily lose control.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what that is about,
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: whether that's really who she is or whether she's trying to present herself as
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: a fighter.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: What's your impression, Neil?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean,
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: I literally had never heard of this person until all of a sudden a few weeks ago,
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: like one of her One of her campaign stops went viral because of her very –
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: and I can't even remember what it was that she kept saying,
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: but it was just such a sort of strange way of speaking,
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: and it just became, like I said, a viral sensation.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I just saw this other video yesterday where a reporter sort of stopped her in
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: the halls of Congress and was like,
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: I want to – I'm not sure if she's just a little bit of an odd duck.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Who knows what the bigger story there is, or at least I don't know.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: But certainly it's getting a lot of attention.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, it's also interesting sort of how folks are lining up.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: So like Elizabeth Warren has given her endorsement to El-Sayed and,
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: you know, Chuck Schumer has endorsed Stevens.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: Stevens is the moderate there.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it's an important seat.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: It is an important seat.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I wonder a couple things.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: One is, does anybody care who Chuck Schumer endorses anymore?
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not trying to be mean about Chuck Schumer, but he has no charisma.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: I do get it.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: He has worked very hard not to let everything fall apart on the Democratic side in the Senate.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think he probably deserves more credit than he gets for that.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: But he is really...
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Increasingly seen as the past in the Democratic Party.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: And oddly,
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Elizabeth Warren,
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: who is only a little bit younger,
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: seems to have seized on the idea of the future and is endorsing all
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: of these candidates who are,
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: politically aligned with her,
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: but also people who really are going to come in and make change.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: I just don't, I think Chuck Schumer endorsing someone is sort of the kiss of death.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you can imagine a candidate actually courting it.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: Although I suppose like,
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: you know, if an endorsement comes to you, you can't like disavow it, right?
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I guess you could depending on who it is.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know,
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think probably at the end of the day,
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: do endorsements really do anything,
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: they sort of maybe help voters know where a candidate sort of falls in a broader,
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: spectrum of the Democratic Party,
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: but I'm not sure most Voters are paying attention to those sorts of things.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: It certainly, I think, shapes media coverage, which is, you know, not insignificant.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm not sure the average voter in,
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Lansing or Grand Rapids is checking the, like,
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: endorsement bracket before they head off to the polls to decide
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: which one they're voting for.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the not-so-insignificant subtext, of course, is that El Sayed is Muslim.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: And after having said in the 2024 election,
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: it really didn't matter that Arab Americans were completely alienated by
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: the Biden administration's inaction to stop Israel from destroying Gaza.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: It strikes me that at least some in the Democratic Party are taking this seriously.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Trump won the state in 2024 only by a point and a half.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, he did win the state.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it's hard to think that some of those Arab votes, many of them went to Trump.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Trump's son-in-law was in Michigan campaigning in the Arab community.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think Tiffany Trump's husband, whose name I can't remember.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: But he was doing that.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: His dad was actually pumping money into the Trump campaign in Michigan.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it's hard to think that that point and a half in Michigan was Was not lost
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: by ignoring the fact that there are a large number of Arab Americans clustered in
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: the southern part of the state.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, Neil.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: So let's head on to our news focus today,
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: which is the loss of two notable figures in the Senate as of last week.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: One, Lindsey Graham,
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: a Republican from South Carolina who died suddenly on July 11th at the age of 71.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's former leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky who was last seen in
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: the Senate on June 11 and remains in care supposedly from a fall and pneumonia at
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: a rehabilitation center.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: We knew about the illnesses and then the death of Graham because
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: of people picking up the police blotter.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: But while we definitely know that Lindsey Graham is dead,
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: we don't know what's going on with McConnell.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Could you catch our listeners up a little bit on what we know about him?
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: About McConnell?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what we know are things like his aides.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: Releasing a statement that was, you know, under his signature that came out on July 12th.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: Then the following day, a photo of McConnell and he was holding a newspaper was released.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like in a kidnapping.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: Completely.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: And he's never looked better, Claire.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: No, I mean, he has this sort of, I have it right in front of me.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: He has this sort of vacant, goofy look on his face.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: He looks a lot like a Muppet.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like what Mitch McConnell would be if he were a Muppet.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it made me think I've never seen Mitch McConnell smile in my entire life.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: But he's smiling in this photograph.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know whether that's involuntary, whether somebody said, Mitch, go ahead and smile.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, are we assuming that this photo is real?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, do it.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: It looks to me AI generated, and I'm certainly not the only one who feels that way.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think any of the mainstream media is touching that,
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: but they've reported it out like this was a real photograph of him.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: But like I said, he's never looked better.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: if they had then told us that what he actually went into the hospital for was
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: a facelift, I'd say, okay, then this photograph makes sense.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: But like,
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: No, I hear you.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, all right.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: So AIDS released a statement under his signature on July 12th.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: That is 11 days ago, I guess now.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that photo came out on the 13th.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: As we've mentioned in previous episodes,
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: there have been a number of people who have claimed
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: to have had 20-minute conversations.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: The magic number.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Substantive ones.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, about Ukraine, about...
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: The budget, about all kinds of things.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: But there has been no video of McConnell actually speaking.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: So let's put a pin in there.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: Nor has he taken a phone call from Fox News anchors or the New York Times.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: one of the things that I mean,
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: we talked about this a couple of weeks ago or like a week or two ago,
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: but that like everyone.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone was claiming it was a 20 minute call and there was something
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: where like Grock had computed that if he'd really done all the 20 minute calls
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: that everyone claimed he had done, it would have constituted 10 hours of his day.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: And also like one of the things that like sort of became apparent too,
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: was everyone sort of said that they had spoken to him for 20 minutes.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: So folks started thinking that maybe they were just literally People were calling in
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: and just prattling on for 20 minutes about whatever they then later claimed
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: that they had spoken to or spoken with him about.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: But none of this is evidence that he was alert and interacting in these conversations.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: And again,
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: none of these phone calls have been to the sort of news outlets that might document
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: that he actually is in fact alive.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: And and so there are these rumors circulating that either he's dead,
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: dead or brain dead or in a coma or whatever.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: I was also told by someone in Washington that he's not dead, that that's clear.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is a Republican said he's not dead,
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: but that they are keeping this going so that they don't have to.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: Challenge the law passed in the Kentucky legislature
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: about how you replace someone like McConnell.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: So let's put a pin in that and get back to that later and speak
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: to our other absence, your friend and mine, Lindsey Graham.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that I realized when I was reading about the death
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: of Lindsey Graham, which frankly I was shocked by, Neil.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: Completely.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I had not imagined a world without Lindsey Graham.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: I really hadn't.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, he's not that much older than I am.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: He's only three years older than I am.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: But he did die of an aortic dissection.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's also conspiracy theory about that we'll get to at the end.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the things that I thought was...
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: Remarkable about this was realizing how much he had lost control of his own story
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: about himself.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: And you and I have talked
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: about how this very private man was almost surely Not just gay,
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: but had a vivid gay life.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, Kara Swisher talked on her podcast about seeing him in gay bars in the 1990s.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: So there's lots of evidence.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just one sex worker publishing a memoir piece in The Advocate.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: But there was a kind of respectful silence about that until
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: the second Trump administration,
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: when he began to be regularly derided on the left and the right about being
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: a closeted gay man, something that he denied.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: But then in the immediate aftermath of his death, memes from the genre just proliferated.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: James Kerchick wrote this really interesting piece saying,
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: you know, all of this homophobia was really just a political smear.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: But, Neil, you're our expert on gay Republicans.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: What was at stake in all of this?
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: And how did Lindsay lose control of his story?
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'll tell you this.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: When I was writing my book about the history of gay Republicans,
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: the number one question I was asked was,
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: Was, was I going to write about Lindsey Graham?
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's,
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: it's kind of amazing how many people, and not only that was the number one question.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: It was like the first question each person people asked me if they had questions
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: about my project was like, are you going to write about Lindsey Graham?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I just think that speaks to.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: The sort of broad.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: Consistence isn't the right word,
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: but the broad sort of sense that this man was a closeted homosexual.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean,
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: this was across a very wide and diverse friend group that isn't necessarily all
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: that engaged in politics.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think that just speaks to your question about how this all got out of hand for him
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: and became a sort of meme even before he died,
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: that he was this sort of closeted dandy.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: Now, how did it get out of control?
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think the internet...
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: I also think it's sort of about his presentation and the sort
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: there's sort of a,
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: like, foppish dandiness to him that, like, plays on, like, old sort of stereotypes.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: And he seems almost a throwback to, you know, the confirmed bachelor archetype.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: And his sort of self-righteousness and his just sort of incredibly hypocritical turn
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: on,
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: you know, being a Never Trumper to being, like, Literally the biggest kiss-up ever.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I think all of that works to have lots of folks not like him to begin with.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then, yeah, I mean,
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a way that he was discredited by folks from all sorts
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: of political positions.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you and I can think about what that means,
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: which I think is sort of what James Kirchick was getting at in his piece,
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: what it means to use that sort of Allegation,
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: that sort of rumor against someone as a way of slurring them,
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: as a way of sort of, you know, knocking them down.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you have,
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: and let me just say,
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: James Kirchick got me to resubscribe to the Free Press because I needed to read
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: that piece and it was paywalled.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: So, so I didn't read the piece because I refused to.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: But I am curious, I'm curious what, because I think he's an interesting writer.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: He is an interesting writer,
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: and he's conservative himself,
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: and of course wrote a history of gay Washington,
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: and so on, a very good history of gay Washington.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so one of the things he really targets,
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: which I'm very sympathetic to,
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: and what has always bothered me of this dragging of Lindsey Graham, is...
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: That it's homophobia,
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: whether it's directed towards someone who's your political enemy,
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: who you think is morally bankrupt, whatever, it's still homophobia.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, why can't we talk about,
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: for example,
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: the fact that he voted against having gays in the military
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: without saying it's even worse because he's gay himself?
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was just bad.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter whether he's gay, whether he's asexual, whatever.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's just bad.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Why do we then have to layer on the icing of, oh, and by the way, he's a silly queer.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: And there's just no way to make fun of someone
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: For being gay without being homophobic.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't actually matter who they are, right?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: And also,
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's not like it's inconsequential that a person who votes against
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: the legalization of same sex marriage also may be living that sort of life
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: or obviously not a life of marriage.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it's,
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: it's not like it's insignificant or inconsequential to the conversation,
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: but I think it just points to most often the reason it's invoked is not to think
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: in nuance and like with nuance about like what this means for sort
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: of one's complicated biography and how that shapes, you know, politics writ large.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's to be this like,
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: And this is one more reason why he's a particularly terrible person,
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: which again, that just so easily slides into just a homophobic statement.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, this is something I wrestled with a lot in writing my project.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what does it mean to think about hypocrisy?
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: How do we understand who political hypocrites are?
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure I necessarily even resolved it for myself,
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: even as I had to sort of take a take a position with the book.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it is a particularly pointed conversation when it comes
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: to this particular issue in a way that I like I can't think of what
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: the equivalent is.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because like an African,
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: say an African American politician who votes against,
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: some sort of issue,
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: there's that folks assume should be an issue that You know,
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: a black politician should support.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that just to me reveals a lot about, you know, assumptions that we have in politics.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't necessarily reveal anything about the particular politician,
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: but it also doesn't engage this aspect of secrecy and of like hypocrisy
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: and self-denial and those sorts of things.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know that there really is an equivalent to this particular scenario.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's interesting.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: The one equivalent I thought of was the man that Lindsey Graham replaced in
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: the Senate, which was Strom Thurmond.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: And remember when it came out that Strom Thurmond had a black daughter?
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: Maintained that position, even as Jim Crow disappeared, was very anti-civil rights and so on.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: How could a man have a black daughter and do this?
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm thinking, well, Thomas Jefferson?
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, so,
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: and in a sense,
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: what people are missing when they say this is hypocrisy is that it was the essence
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: of Jim Crow that white men Could do with black women as they wanted to.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that southern racism was an incredibly intimate arrangement between the races.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so it shows a sort of profound ignorance of the real people and the real place.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: But also to get back to homophobia,
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: the other thing that really sort of gets my goat are these memes that Put Trump
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: and Graham in women's clothes.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: And particularly the ones that sort of imagine Lindsey Graham as a Southern Belle,
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: as if being a closeted gay Means that you must,
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: in fact, also be a person who goes out in a dress.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it's, you know, it's incoherent, but it's just wrong and it sucks.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: So the sudden absence of two very senior senators has once again cast a spotlight
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: on how old the Senate is.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: Neil, how old is the Senate?
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, honestly, I found this even...
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: Shocking,
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: even knowing that it is old,
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: I found it sort of shocking to find out actually how old it is.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: So the average age of the Senate is 64.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: And we have some wonderful folks pulling the average way up with, you know, some examples.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, 92 years old.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what is he?
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: Why is he still doing this?
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: Bernie Sanders, Vermont, Mitch McConnell, Kentucky.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: Both of them are 84 years old.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: Jim Risch.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: From Idaho, Angus King, the Independent from Maine, they are 82.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: Dick Durbin, Democrat from Illinois, who is retiring, but he's 81 years old.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: So a third of the Senate is over the age of 70.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that is quite a statistic.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine if someone said a third of the executive suite of AT&T is over 70?
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: No, and,
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: I was actually listening to a podcast with Scott Galloway and, oh,
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm blanking on her name,
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: the woman who's the sort of heroic moderate Democrat on Fox News,
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: who I enjoy watching her viral clips.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: But Scott Galloway, the,
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: the NYU business professor who's made himself into quite the podcaster, he was...
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: He was making that very argument.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: There's no corporation where this sort of stuff would be allowed.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: In fact,
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: one of the most important things of executive leadership is a succession plan
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: in place that's about ensuring the ongoing health and vitality of the corporation
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: and that we just don't have that in politics.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: And Galloway was talking to Kara Swisher about this as well.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, you know, in every corporation you have a succession plan.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: And there is no succession plan in the Senate.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: There are no requirements for senators or representatives
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: to reveal their health status,
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: which makes it possible to just go and be hospitalized for depression for months
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: and not tell anybody where you are.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other piece of it is the seniority system makes it advantageous
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: to keep senators in place.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: And in answer to the question of why is Chuck Grassley still in the Senate?
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: My understanding is he didn't want to run again.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the Trump people came to him and said, we need you to run.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: We need you to take charge of a major committee.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: We need to have the seat locked down.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: But you look at Chuck Grassley in a hearing, and oh, my heavens.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: And remember that when Lindsey Graham came into the Senate, Strom Thurmond was 100%.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: That was in 2003.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: Graham began as a representative and then he ran for that Senate seat.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: And Strom was 100 years old.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what's also horrifying to me, frankly, Neil, is that people go out and vote for them.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's the power of the incumbency.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of the folks are not really paying close attention.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we know this.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of folks don't pay close attention to American politics.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: So even voters, right?
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: So they're not...
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: All that up to date on the age of their senator,
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: let alone even what they're doing as much as they're just going
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: and checking boxes next to the letter that they like.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean,
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: it's really,
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: it's sort of surprising to me that we don't have
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: a bigger political movement around Age limits on this.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's been here and there through
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: recent political history,
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: there's been sort of these moments where there's a sort of a term limit movement,
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like, but I don't know that there's ever really been one that's focused on like age limits.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: And on one hand,
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: it makes me sort of squeamish to think of those being imposed a little bit,
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: or maybe that's not the right, I just sort of recoil a little bit from it.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: Then you see the numbers like we've just walked through here and you think, well,
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: if folks aren't sort of just making the right and good decision that at
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: a certain age they ought to bow out of this and that that's not just being sort
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: of achieved sort of through cultural and social norms around this sort of stuff,
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: then maybe we do need some rules in place.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, I think you're right.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the other thing, of course, is when you are, I mean, Bad things can happen at any age.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, Russ Feingold went down in a plane.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: But it is also the case that when you're in your 70s and 80s,
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: it is more likely that something bad is going to happen to you.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: Lindsey Graham had mentioned to people that he didn't feel well,
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: but he was busy flying back and forth to Ukraine.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he traveled a lot.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: He worked very, very, very hard.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: And of course,
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: he died of an aortic dissection,
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: which if it's not attended to, can kill you in seconds.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: My guess is the aorta was already tearing, and that's why he didn't feel well.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: It often feels like you have indigestion.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: When that happens,
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: I had a friend who did not die of an aortic dissection,
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: but I learned a lot about it then.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know,
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: the older you are,
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: the more fragile your heart is,
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: the more fragile your vascular system is,
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: the more fragile your brain is, the more likely you are to get a terrible cancer.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: So in the situation that we're in, let's do a little more arithmetic.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: The current alignment in the Senate is 45 Democrats,
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: two independents who caucus with Democrats, both of whom are in their 80s.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: And 53 Republicans.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: With Graham's passing and McConnell's incapacity, the GOP was temporarily down two votes.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: With the appointment of Graham's sister,
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: Darlene Nardone, who,
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: by the way,
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: says he adopted her when she was,
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, 13 or something like that, and their parents died.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: And Darlene says that's why he never got married,
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: because he was too busy parenting her during the years that he might...
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: I love these stories.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: I love...
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: This is the stories you tell in the South.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it really, like...
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, of course,
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: that makes total sense,
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: you know, and that you do this with a straight face, no pun intended.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, bless all of their hearts, but yeah.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, on the main line,
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: the way they used to say a man was gay is someone would say, he has a mother.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like...
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, and J.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: Edgar Hoover,
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: like his family always said, oh,
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: he didn't need to be married because he was married to the Bureau of Investigation.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, he was actually married to Clyde Tolson.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, so Darlene Nardone has taken Lindsey Graham's place.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: She was appointed by Henry McMaster to fill out his term.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're going to come back to Darlene in a second.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: So now the GOP is only down one vote, but...
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, they're missing two very experienced, very powerful voices, McConnell and Graham.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then there are five other Republicans in play on any given day for the next 18 weeks.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: Maine's Susan Collins,
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: who is really, I'm sure, trying to shore up her position in the race she's in.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: Texas's John Cornyn, who doesn't give an F anymore.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: North Carolina's Tom Tillis, also not giving an F.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: Kentucky's Rand Paul, who is famously independent, as is Alaska's Lisa Murkowski.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: So all of a sudden,
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: the Senate may be in a position to do absolutely nothing until January, right?
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: And you mean that those are in play not because they're vulnerable in the election.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: You mean just in terms of any,
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: on any given vote,
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: these are not like lockstep Republicans,
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: especially around some of the most sort of egregious things that
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: the Trump administration is trying to do.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, but, but all of that means is just grid further gridlock, right?
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's a,
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: it's a Republican party that can't move things forward, which,
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: thank goodness,
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_01: but also it doesn't mean that the,
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: that there's enough votes there to like, um,
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: And these certainly aren't the sort of reliable voters
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: that would make democratic policy objectives.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't give them a path forward either.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, just further, further gridlock here.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think,
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if this is something that the midterm elections clears up for
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: the Senate.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: No, I don't think it does.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Cornyn and Tillis will be gone.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: Has always covered all of her bases with liberals.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: And she may be in a very tough race,
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: we don't know,
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: with Troy Jackson in Maine, the new candidate there who's replaced Graham Plattner.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: Tom Tillis,
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: it is rumored that he may want to be governor of North Carolina,
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: which is a very purple state.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: And Rand Paul, it is also rumored, may want to be president.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: He's been sort of...
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: Pulling together money and doing a lot of stuff that suggests that he might want to announce.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then Lisa Murkowski has never been an ally of the Trump administration.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, and then Darlene Nardone is just there to cast whatever vote she's told to cast.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_00: I believe she's, what, an optician or something like that.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, she has no political experience.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: And She's also actually going to run to fill Lindsay's seat, but we'll get to that in a minute.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: Graham is up for reelection this year.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's going to be a special primary in August to choose a replacement.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: Darlene is going to run in that.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: Who else is running, Neil?
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: Trey Gowdy actually says he doesn't want to run,
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: although he has been talked about as a strong candidate.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: Lieutenant Governor Pamela Avet has also said that she's not running.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: What is this race shaping up to be?
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Donald Trump has endorsed Darlene Nardone, Lindsey Graham's sister.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: Are we calling it now?
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think so.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think there are going to be people jumping in.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_00: And interestingly,
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: Annie Andrews,
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: who is the Democratic candidate for Senate,
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: who is already,
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think she ran for governor and lost, but she's running for Senate this time.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: And at the time of his death, Lindsey Graham was only leading Annie Andrews by three points.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the Cook Political Report has said this is a solid red seat.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_00: South Carolina has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since Fritz Hollings in 1998.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_01: Remember Fritz Hollings?
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: I do.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: And Trump won the state by 14 points in 2024.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: So it doesn't seem likely that Annie Andrews could take this away from the Republicans, but...
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: We've all been at a swivet about the main Senate race and the fact
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: that there's only 100 days to run a campaign there.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, whoever jumps in against Darlene Nardone,
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: they have to do a quickie campaign in August,
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: and then they have to do a statewide campaign in the fall.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_00: So this doesn't look good to me.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: Why is Trump endorsing her?
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: there's a lot of speculation online from the far right that she's actually a,
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_01: to use a word,
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: a closet liberal,
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_01: which of course is probably crazy,
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_01: but I think that just means- I thought you were
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: going to say she was
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: a closeted lesbian and things were going to get more and more interesting.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I actually don't know her.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I've read anywhere that she's married,
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: but we can only speculate so much about only so many people on this show.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_01: But
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: there is this sort of like online far right panic that she's not a tried
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_01: and true MAGA person.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: And
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_01: But then it's sort of, why is Trump weighing in on this?
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why is he endorsed her?
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_01: Is it because inside the White House they believe that actually this is the ideal person?
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like someone who has no political,
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: background,
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_01: who is obviously,
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: more connected to the deceased politician than anyone else on earth and
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_01: so can be easily pressured into,
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: quote unquote, continuing his legacy by being just a rubber stamp vote for Trump?
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that could be true.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's interesting because,
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: of course,
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: there's this long history of wives replacing husbands in the House and the Senate.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, I think the first female governor of Texas was the wife of the governor of Texas.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's this other thing,
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: and George Wallace and his wife did it too,
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: where they would sort of swap the governorship back and forth so that
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: the same governor could Actually be governor for longer
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: because his wife was being governor.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway,
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_00: but also of wives coming to the House and the Senate to replace a deceased spouse
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: and then being elected in their own right.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think,
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_00: isn't that how Margaret Chase Smith originally got to the Senate and
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: then she was elected in her own right that she came to replace her husband?
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_00: I believe that's right, yeah.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: And she was dynamite.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: But, of course, Graham didn't have a wife.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_00: So his sister has sort of stepped in as his wife,
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: and she's also a really important element of his political biography, right?
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you sort of alluded to it already, but his parents were killed.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_01: Or did one of them die in a...
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_01: In a car accident and the other died from,
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_01: I don't remember why, but they died while he was in college.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's right.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: He was, I believe, like a sophomore in college and his sister was 12 or 13 at the time.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_01: And he went home to get her and apparently moved her to where he was living
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_01: in Columbia, where he was at the University of South Carolina.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_01: And Raised her.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been a big part of his biography for, I think, you know, lots of reasons.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_01: One, you know,
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: that's a sort of,
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's the sort of story that any political candidate tells of having to,
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: like, grow up early, face hardship.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_01: Do the right thing, you know, devotion to family and all the rest.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_01: But of course,
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: as we've talked about a lot today,
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: this provided a sort of political or sort of cover for him and for the fact that,
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: you know, he never had a wife.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think it's sort of been an interesting way that that story has both...
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: one of the things I'd love to know that I've never read anything about is,
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_00: for example, did she come with him to political events?
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if there was a state dinner and he needed a plus one.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, interesting.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_00: Was there some female friend who filled that role or a squad of female friends
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_00: who filled that role or did Darlene come in and do it with him?
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_00: so I mean,
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_00: obviously,
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_00: they're very,
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_00: very close,
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: but it is also possible that she Really,
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: has been part of his career in a much bigger way and is better known on Capitol Hill
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: than any of us have imagined.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so numbers don't tell the whole story of what it means for senior senators
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_00: to suddenly drop out of business, which we've talked about a little bit.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: But although McConnell has been failing visibly for some time,
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: he chaired the Committee on Rules and Administration,
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_00: which is a really big committee in the Senate.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: And he was on the Appropriations Committee, which is a very big deal.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_00: It is chaired by Susan Collins right now,
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_00: but also The Budget Committee is seeing a lot of business because of the need
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: for more funds to run our foolish war in Iran.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_00: So McConnell cannot be easily replaced.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we talked a little bit early on about why.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_00: But can you review this for listeners, Neil?
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: Why will it be difficult to replace McConnell between now and the November election
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_00: when a new senator will be elected?
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to use your help a little bit on this because it is a bit complicated,
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_01: but there was a recently passed law that bars the governor of Kentucky,
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_01: who's Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, from doing so.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_01: The constitutionality of that law would have to be tested in order for this to be changed.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_01: But it looks like at this point, Beshear's hands are tied.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: Is there anything more about that that we should know,
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: or does that sort of cover the broad situation?
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: That does cover the broad situation.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_00: What I have heard is that, well,
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_00: first of all,
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_00: when Andy Beshear was elected,
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: he was the first Democratic governor of Kentucky in a long time,
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: maybe since his father was governor of Kentucky.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a solid Republican legislature,
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_00: and they immediately met in a special system to strip powers out of
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_00: the governor's office.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_00: That has never been legally challenged.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that is one question on the table.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_00: What they said is that if a senator...
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_00: Went down in any way that that senator could only be replaced by three members
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_00: of his own party appointed by the legislature,
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_00: choosing someone who would then be approved by the legislature.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, they completely looped the governor out.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that is not true in the other 49 states.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_00: In the other 49 states, the governor simply appoints someone.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: So the problem is if The Republicans in Kentucky try to do that.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_00: What they risk is the entire package of laws that they pass
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_00: to disempower Andy Beshear going to the Supreme Court.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_00: So that's part of my understanding of why McConnell does not resign,
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: because if he resigned, he would have to be replaced.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_00: The problem being is until he returns,
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_00: if he ever returns,
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: you know, maybe there'll just be a big potato sitting in his seat in the Senate.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_00: His seat on all the committees remains vacant since he can't be replaced except by
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_00: a full vote of the Senate.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: And remember this when Dianne Feinstein was spinning out and clearly was very, very demented?
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_00: And people kept saying, yeah,
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_00: but we have to keep bringing her into the room and sitting her in the chair because
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_00: the Republicans will not allow us to replace her.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: So they're in a bind.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_00: John Thune is in a real bind with McConnell that he's not in with Graham.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the story.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is wild.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's crazy.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_01: He has not been seen for how many days?
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's over a month at this point, isn't it?
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_01: Over a month.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: Over a month.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like six weeks.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like this feels like the thing that you could pull off in the 1930s, right?
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_01: To have someone in our 24-7 cable news,
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: social media,
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_01: digital moment,
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_01: not seen,
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_01: a person of this stature and importance,
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_01: and everyone's just acting like there's nothing else to be done about this,
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_01: and this just is a completely normal case that someone's at the hospital and just...
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_01: We can't verify that they're alive.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's crazy.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think we could really speak,
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_01: we could broaden this out to like the sort of big picture diagnosis
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_01: of what this means about American politics,
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: but I don't even know if we need to spell that out.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like it just sort of, it is what it is.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_01: But I did feel like we needed to just sort of like have a moment to be like WTF, right?
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, do you remember now,
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: one of our listeners is going to catch me out on this, I know,
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: but I think it was Grover Cleveland who was put on a boat and taken out into
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_00: the Atlantic to be operated on for cancer of the jaw because they didn't want anyone
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_00: to know it was happening.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's what this reminds me of.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's so 19th century.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: And anyway, okay, so...
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_00: Missing Graham is also a big deal, too.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's a Trump critic turned Trump loyalist.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_00: He chaired the Budget Committee, which is huge.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_00: He was also in the Judiciary Appropriations and Environment
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_00: and Public Works committees,
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_00: all of which are very,
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_00: very busy in the era of Trump and on which he had tremendous influence.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_00: And while Darlene Nardone,
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_00: she will take those seats,
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_00: she can cast votes, but she can't fill the role her brother played in the Senate.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_00: Particularly in foreign policy and national security.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_00: There are people who are very,
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_00: very worried about what's going to happen to Ukraine funding in the absence
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_00: of Lindsey Graham.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_00: As I say, Darlene can vote, but she can't go around talking to people with deep authority.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_00: She has no relationship with political leaders, as her brother did.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, we've got Todd Blanche.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_00: Who is currently in hearings to be confirmed as Attorney General.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the Judiciary Committee is hearing that as well.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just there is so much going on and it seems to be spinning out of control.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_00: And losing these two guys is just like it's like pulling the plug out of the bathtub
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_00: or something.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_01: it seems strange to sort of wish that Graham and McConnell were still around for
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_01: the sake of normalcy.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_01: And again,
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_01: normalcy is in big quotation marks because of the completely abnormal times we're
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_01: in, but like this norm, you know, but like I do think –
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't a good situation for all the reasons you've outlined,
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_01: let alone for the deeper,
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_01: sort of existential issues of like trust and transparency that all of this,
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_01: you know, does nothing to improve.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I would like to say, I always wanted to meet Lindsey Graham.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_00: I always did.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_00: I remember once when I was in Washington doing research and I had an hour to kill
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_00: and I went over to the Senate and I just sort of like roamed around
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_00: a little bit hoping I would run into Lindsey Graham and I never did.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm not the strangest person in the room because at a moment when trust
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_00: in government could not be lower, there are, of course, conspiracy theories.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_00: What are the conspiracy theories and where are they coming from, Neil?
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, where they're coming from, I don't think will surprise anyone.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's folks like Laura Loomer, George Santos.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_01: They're always out there.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so this is certainly one that they're going to be quick to jump in on.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_01: So both of them have used their platforms to Say,
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_01: just, you know, assert that Graham was murdered.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_01: Cash Patel has let everyone know that he is on the case.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_01: we know that Cash Patel knows how to lead an investigation and get to the bottom
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_01: of things.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_01: So don't worry, folks.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I mean, other rumors out there are sort of conspiracy rumors that are swirling.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_01: Mitch McConnell rumored to be,
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_01: you know, Obviously, variously dead or in a coma, as we've discussed.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_01: Loomer, again, is claiming that he's brain dead.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_01: Does Loomer ever back up these claims with any shred of evidence?
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_01: She didn't even bother concocting some false evidence.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_01: She just makes the claims, right?
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but, you know, I am quite sure that she is paid for everything she does.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, definitely.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_00: So the big question is who is behind all of this?
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because she's not making it up out of whole – I mean, she may be.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_00: She's crazy.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_00: But it's also true that she is paid to do this.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_00: So there is some kind of method to her madness.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that those of us who live in the sane part of
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_00: the world can't figure out what it is – But it's also true that the rumors
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_00: about McConnell were fueled last week
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_00: when Andy Beshear said he received two phone calls and he said from agencies
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_00: that Mitch McConnell had actually passed.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that was confusing to me, too,
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_00: because I don't know why Beshear would have passed on information
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_00: that he could not verify.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_01: Completely.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_01: That to me was like a very poor judgment on his part to pass that on.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you've received two calls from folks purporting to be from agencies.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_01: Those agencies should hold a press conference and come forward and make their claim
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_01: in public with, you know, evidence that should be then verified.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_01: It just seemed like a real misstep on Beshear's part.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_01: I can't like go full conspiratorial and then imagine that he's in on this too.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't even know what the point of that would be.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_01: But that am I am I interpreting this wrongly as just sort of a bad misstep
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_01: on his part of not thinking through.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_01: Sharing that information in the way that he did?
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was a misjudgment.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think what he might have been doing is trying to provoke whoever is in charge
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_00: of McConnell to sort of come forward and offer some evidence
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_00: that McConnell wasn't dead.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_00: But it's too much like a Shonda Rhimes drama at this point because you sort
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_00: of think,
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_00: well, if McConnell's dead, there are so many people who would be in the know.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like, where would you put his body?
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_00: That a lot of people would not actually have to lay hands on it at some point.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know why Beshear did that.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't help.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_00: And while on the one hand, it's almost August.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_00: All the senators are almost going home.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's not a whole lot happening in Washington and there won't be for the next four months.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_00: It is kind of a shabby way to treat someone who has devoted his entire life to
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_00: the public, I think.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of feel that way about both of these guys.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_00: for all that they have enabled and empowered a political world that neither you
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_00: or I want to live in, they weren't always terrible people.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_00: Were they?
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_01: If we had a real answer on what McConnell's state was,
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like I might be a little bit more open to sort of thinking broadly about him
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_01: and his legacy.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_01: But like in the absence of that, I just I don't know.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_01: I don't necessarily feel the need to go there.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_01: We could,
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_01: we could do a whole nother hour on Graham,
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_01: you know, and just sort of like, what's the psychology there?
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_01: How do we understand sort of political biography and the particular
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_01: of this man's life and the sort of decades that he lived and,
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_01: the vast transformation of the LGBTQ rights movement,
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_01: let alone just the,
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_01: what that meant for the average gay or lesbian person in this country and how that,
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_01: lines up sort of perfectly with the years of his life and the choices that he made.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's a lot more to be said there.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_01: I feel a sort of sadness towards him and the choices that he seemed to make.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_01: He seemed to me like a really unhappy person.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_01: But whatever sadness or empathy I feel towards him is small compared to the,
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_01: like, just complete opposition I have to the politics he stood for.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_01: On a whole host of issues,
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_01: let alone on his sort of anti-gay, quote unquote, family values politics.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not feeling as generous as you are right now, Claire.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, maybe it's just because I've been having a hard time doing a lot of stuff
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_00: in response to my family emergency.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, so, Neil, we're going to drop that for now.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we will return to, well,
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_00: we'll certainly return to McConnell if he actually dies and maybe return to Graham
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_00: at some point.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_00: Hunter Biden is looning around saying that there's this Republican gay mafia
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_00: that is running Washington.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why anybody listens to Hunter Biden at all.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_00: But that has also stirred things up.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_00: So we may have to return to the Republican gay mafia and,
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_00: of course, your favorite part of the swamp.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean,
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_01: I was losing my mind,
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_01: too, on how Hunter Biden has become like this person that everyone's quoting.
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_01: But we don't need to go down that rabbit hole.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_00: So what do we want to go viral this week, Neil?
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_01: My husband is out of town for a work trip this week,
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_01: so I am binging true crime documentaries that I,
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_01: you know, don't get to watch when he's around because he doesn't like that stuff.
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_01: This is not the best one I've watched this week,
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_01: but it's certainly it's the one that I want to talk about
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_01: because I think there's something really interesting at the heart of it.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_01: The documentary, it came out earlier this spring.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's called The Predator of Seville.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's three episodes.
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_01: You can watch it really quickly on Netflix.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's about this really horrific story that's sort of in the 20-teens.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_01: It revolves around this case that happened in 2013
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_01: with all these young American students who go abroad to study in Spain.
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_01: And when they're abroad,
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_01: they use this combination I think it was called Discover Excursions and it was one
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_01: of those like travel companies that you would use where you're like studying
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_01: in Salamanca for the semester but you want to go to Paris for the weekend or Morocco
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_01: or whatever and you sign up you know you pay $200 and you get to go
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_01: with 150 other kids on these airplanes and these bus trips to other places
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_01: in Europe.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the man who was leading this company is a man named Manuel Blanco Vela.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_01: He was basically raping dozens of women.
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_01: He was running this business and coordinating these trips.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_01: And in a lot of ways to sexually assault the young women who are on it.
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so the story really revolves around this one woman who had this experience
• 1:10:37
  SPEAKER_01: in 2013, came home and really sort of her life began to spiral.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_01: She was at the University of Montana.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_01: She called her mom,
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_01: her parents one day and said,
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_01: I was raped in Spain,
• 1:10:51
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm thinking about killing myself, and so I'm driving home to be with you all.
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Her parents were really wonderful in how they handled it,
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_01: and the documentary, and they're incredible people as well.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_01: But what begins is this young woman,
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_01: when she gets her bearings again with the help of her family,
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_01: She decides that she's going to start blowing up this guy's life.
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so she goes onto Facebook and starts posting things about,
• 1:11:23
  SPEAKER_01: if you're going abroad, do not ever use Discover Excursions.
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_01: This man raped me.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_01: She's thinking she's just warning folks and trying to sort of End his business.
• 1:11:35
  SPEAKER_01: But of course,
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_01: what that does,
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_01: it brings dozens and dozens of young women out who then contact her on Facebook
• 1:11:43
  SPEAKER_01: and say, I had that experience as well.
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_01: And this shocks her.
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_01: She never really imagined that it could have happened to anyone else.
• 1:11:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so that alone is really fascinating to me.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, that is what helps mobilize a broader community.
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Legal case against him as all these women come forward and in solidarity,
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_01: connect with each other and find their voice.
• 1:12:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then through that,
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_01: go forward to the detectives and to law enforcement to basically move this
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_01: and create the investigation.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I just found that really moving.
• 1:12:25
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that I found particularly moving was how many women said,
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_01: I thought I was responsible for what happened to me.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_01: I felt I was so dumb to have gone on this trip and,
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_01: had too much to drink when I was in a foreign country and,
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_01: all the sort of self-judgment and all the self-criticism around this and like shame
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_01: on me.
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not until each of them found out that actually this guy was doing this
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_01: to dozens and dozens of them, that he was a rapist and that this is how he operated.
• 1:13:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I just found that really moving and upsetting and just so revealing of how
• 1:13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Predators are able to operate.
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_01: And just sort of the broader conditions around stories like this.
• 1:13:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I found all these young women so heroic and it really just moved me to sort
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_01: of hear their stories.
• 1:13:31
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway,
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_01: I maybe should have also given a bit of a warning of what the content of this was
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_01: about.
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it's worth watching if this is something that,
• 1:13:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, I just think it's worth watching.
• 1:13:46
  SPEAKER_01: Again, it's called The Predator of Seville and it's on Netflix.
• 1:13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, I will stick a content warning at the top of the newsletter for people.
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know,
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_00: this also makes me think, Neil,
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad you brought this up because I did a bonus episode
• 1:14:03
  SPEAKER_00: with Amy Freed last week about the aftermath of the Graham Plattner stuff in Maine.
• 1:14:09
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things she said,
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_00: and I think she's right, is that feminism is so institutionalized now.
• 1:14:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the one thing women don't do that much anymore is talk about their experiences.
• 1:14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_00: when second wave feminism,
• 1:14:27
  SPEAKER_00: certainly radical feminism,
• 1:14:29
  SPEAKER_00: launched in 1967, 68, women talked about their experiences all the time.
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_00: They had speak outs,
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_00: they had take back the night marches, they had consciousness raising, and so on.
• 1:14:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really worth thinking about how much many women,
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_00: often in their 30s even, Don't know about what can happen to you.
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And of course,
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_00: you don't want to go around terrorizing people,
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_00: never talk to a stranger, never have a drink with a man you don't know and so on.
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_00: But that in fact, that so many people could be harmed by one man.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_00: And each of those women thought that it was their fault.
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's just a heartbreak.
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's awful.
• 1:15:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a heartbreak.
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, What I want you to read this week
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_00: and what I think should go viral is Rebecca Egan McCarthy's account
• 1:15:26
  SPEAKER_00: of horse racing's slow collapse in the United States.
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_00: And she really pins the story to the closing of one
• 1:15:35
  SPEAKER_00: of New York City's storied venues for horse racing, the Aqueduct Racetrack.
• 1:15:41
  SPEAKER_00: The article is called The End of Aqueduct Racetrack.
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_00: But what it really talks about,
• 1:15:46
  SPEAKER_00: first of all,
• 1:15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Aqueduct Racetrack used to be this sort of premier venue for horse racing.
• 1:15:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was built in the late 19th or early 20th century.
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it's sort of twinned with Belmont, which still exists.
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, horse racing has seen worse and worse days.
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_00: One being because you can gamble at home on your phone.
• 1:16:10
  SPEAKER_00: They tried to shore up horse racing with state funding.
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_00: They tried to shore up horse racing with putting slot machines and other kinds of gambling.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_00: But really, all that does is detract from the horse racing.
• 1:16:24
  SPEAKER_00: But the real problem with horse racing,
• 1:16:25
  SPEAKER_00: particularly in this country, is that it is terrible for the animals.
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_00: And during the last month of Aqueduct's time,
• 1:16:35
  SPEAKER_00: about a dozen horses had to be put down on the track.
• 1:16:39
  SPEAKER_00: And horses are run when they're not well,
• 1:16:41
  SPEAKER_00: they're run when they're on drugs,
• 1:16:43
  SPEAKER_00: they are run in conditions they shouldn't be run on.
• 1:16:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so horse racing has also become unpopular because it is increasingly
• 1:16:52
  SPEAKER_00: and correctly seen as a form of animal abuse.
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that is really less so in places like France or England,
• 1:17:02
  SPEAKER_00: where they regulate it a great deal more heavily.
• 1:17:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's also true that in France and England, you can only run horses on turf.
• 1:17:10
  SPEAKER_00: You can't run them on dirt tracks.
• 1:17:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the dirt tracks that contribute to the kinds of catastrophic failures
• 1:17:19
  SPEAKER_00: that horses endure.
• 1:17:21
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the things that McCarthy also points out about aqueduct was in
• 1:17:28
  SPEAKER_00: the last 30 or 40 years, it was one of the most diverse places to go.
• 1:17:34
  SPEAKER_00: In New York City.
• 1:17:35
  SPEAKER_00: That people came from all walks of life.
• 1:17:37
  SPEAKER_00: It was a place where, well, I used to go to aqueduct.
• 1:17:40
  SPEAKER_00: I used to bet on the horses when I was in graduate school.
• 1:17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because one of the things I learned was that betting
• 1:17:46
  SPEAKER_00: on horses was really just like doing history.
• 1:17:49
  SPEAKER_00: All you had to do was research the horses.
• 1:17:51
  SPEAKER_00: And you could get a good idea of how that race was going to end.
• 1:17:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought it was lots of fun.
• 1:17:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then increasingly, I became one of those people that couldn't bear it.
• 1:18:02
  SPEAKER_00: That the horses were being hurt in such great numbers.
• 1:18:06
  SPEAKER_00: But aqueduct was wonderful.
• 1:18:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 1:18:07
  SPEAKER_00: you could be sitting there next to a taxi driver on one side,
• 1:18:11
  SPEAKER_00: a bodega owner on the other side, and everybody having a grand old time.
• 1:18:17
  SPEAKER_00: But what McCarthy is saying is
• 1:18:20
  SPEAKER_00: that actually something like 40 racetracks have closed in the last five years in
• 1:18:25
  SPEAKER_00: the United States.
• 1:18:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that increasingly horse racing is a California, Florida, New York thing.
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_00: And even those venues are starting to close.
• 1:18:38
  SPEAKER_00: So really what the horse racing industry has done to itself is
• 1:18:43
  SPEAKER_00: by refusing regulation And refusing to treat the animals better,
• 1:18:48
  SPEAKER_00: much less the riders and the stable men and so on and so forth,
• 1:18:55
  SPEAKER_00: is really a lack of interest in their sport.
• 1:19:00
  SPEAKER_00: And propping it up with more gambling has been exactly the wrong thing to do
• 1:19:05
  SPEAKER_00: because actually you have to know something about horses to bet on them.
• 1:19:08
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to know anything to bet on a slot machine.
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a great article about New York and how New York is changing
• 1:19:16
  SPEAKER_00: about how what was a sort of premier sports venue will probably be plowed under
• 1:19:25
  SPEAKER_00: and turned into housing or something.
• 1:19:28
  SPEAKER_00: But it's an extremely well-written piece about the city both you and I love very much.
• 1:19:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm forward to reading that.
• 1:19:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm someone who watches The Triple Crown every year, but with just such...
• 1:19:43
  SPEAKER_01: Feelings of guilt about it because I know just the whole industry is
• 1:19:51
  SPEAKER_01: just built on
• 1:19:53
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of violence against animals.
• 1:19:56
  SPEAKER_01: But I also just sort of love the pageantry of those three races.
• 1:19:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm a terrible person, terrible hypocrite.
• 1:20:02
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it's an awful sport.
• 1:20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, a horse running is a beautiful thing.
• 1:20:08
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's gorgeous.
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_00: A horse running and then fracturing her cannon bone and having to be put down on
• 1:20:14
  SPEAKER_00: the track is a terrible thing.
• 1:20:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's actually interesting that one of the things they do as soon as
• 1:20:20
  SPEAKER_00: a horse goes down is people run out and put a tent around it.
• 1:20:24
  SPEAKER_00: So nobody has to see what happens next.
• 1:20:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I kind of think, you know, if people were forced to look, it's like, Football.
• 1:20:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 1:20:32
  SPEAKER_00: we don't actually have to see people's brains deteriorating
• 1:20:35
  SPEAKER_00: from multiple concussions,
• 1:20:37
  SPEAKER_00: so we can kind of pretend it's not happening, like the Iran War.
• 1:20:41
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:20:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, Neil, next week is going to be our last broadcast until after Labor Day.
• 1:20:49
  SPEAKER_00: So, listeners, better tune in.
• 1:20:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be a good one.
• 1:20:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's going to be plenty of content on this site, but Neil and I are taking August 1st.
• 1:20:59
  SPEAKER_00: What are you going to do with your August, Neil?
• 1:21:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, my husband is getting rotator cuff surgery, so I'm going to.
• 1:21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, fun.
• 1:21:06
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 1:21:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's worse for him than me,
• 1:21:09
  SPEAKER_01: but I will be, you know, tending to him and continuing to write this book.
• 1:21:17
  SPEAKER_00: I bet you're going to be very, very sweet to him.
• 1:21:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think if I were to be taking care of anyone other than my wife, it would be you, Neil.
• 1:21:26
  SPEAKER_00: But you don't have to.
• 1:21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Not yet.
• 1:21:28
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Bye-bye.
• 1:21:31
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.
• 1:21:32
  And that's it for today's show.
• 1:21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for hanging out with us.
• 1:21:57
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• 1:22:02
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• 1:22:08
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• 1:22:13
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• 1:22:15
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• 1:22:16
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• 1:22:21
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• 1:22:26
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• 1:22:31
  SPEAKER_00: Our podcast is supported by the New School for Social Research and by paying subscribers.
• 1:22:36
  SPEAKER_00: Political Junkie is written, recorded, edited, and produced by me, Claire Potter.
• 1:22:41
  SPEAKER_00: Today's theme is Knocking on Heaven's Door,
• 1:22:43
  SPEAKER_00: written by Bob Dylan, sung by Brian Ferry, and licensed through Lifty.
• 1:22:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's all for now.
• 1:22:49
  SPEAKER_00: See you next week.
• 1:22:53
  SPEAKER_00: I feel I'm knocking on Heaven's door.